BY MARK FRIEDMAN
HIROSHIMA - Two of the participants in the activities
held here for the 50th anniversary of Washington's atomic
bombing of this city were from Utah. Priscilla Empey is
President of the National Association of Radiation
Survivors and Claudia Peterson is a member of the Nevada
"Downwinder" organization.
Peterson's father, father-in-law, daughter, and sister all died from various cancers due to the radioactive fallout from U.S. military tests in Nevada that drifted into Utah in the 1950s.
Peterson said in an interview: "What happened to people here in Hiroshima and those in southern Utah is similar, but we were killed in a secret and devious manner. The government almost gloats over it.
"Many people where I live see Hiroshima as something that had to happen," she continued, "but I can't justify it. We were perfect guinea pigs. The government told us everything was OK and we let it happen. People believed what they were told. People couldn't believe the government would do this to them."
The activist added, "Lives have been devastated by illness and birth defects, as the government lied for 40 years." Peterson pointed out that some people have received government compensation, but melanomas and other cancers are not covered.
Some 2,870 people have filed claims and 2,208 were paid a maximum of $50,000. Test site workers received a one time payment of $70,000 and uranium miners got $100,000. These are maximum benefits to cover years of medical expenses. Funds have run out for many people just as new illnesses and cancers arise.
In her testimony to an international symposium here on the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Japan, Empey explained that her father was a uranium miner who died at 51 from lung cancer. "My father may have been exposed to the equivalent of 13,672 months worth of radiation during the 120 months he worked in the mines from l950 to 1960."
The whole Empey family was exposed because there was no place at work for miners to clean up before coming home. "My father was so fluorescent at times that when my grandfather put his Geiger counter on him in the dark he would glow," Empey said.
The U.S. government knew of the dangers. In 1950, U.S. Public Health Service teams sampled radon concentrations at the mine site and found averages at 120 times the recommended safe working level.